*Source: PSS vol 33*

Engels found himself compelled to express himself on this point in connection with the question of the scientific incorrectness of the term "social-democrat."

In the preface to an edition of his articles from the 1870s on various themes, predominantly "international" in content ("Internationales aus dem «Volksstaat»"*), a preface dated January 3, 1894—that is, written a year and a half before Engels' death—he wrote that in all the articles the word "communist" is used, not "social-democrat," because at that time social-democrats was the name chosen by Proudhonists in France and Lassalleans in Germany.

"...For Marx and for me," Engels continues, "it was therefore pure impossibility to employ for the designation of our specific point of view an expression so elastic. At the present time things stand differently, and this word ('social-democrat') may, perhaps, be permitted (mag passieren), although it remains imprecise (unpassend, unsuitable) for such a party whose economic programme is not simply socialist in general, but directly communist—for a party whose political ultimate aim is the overcoming of the entire state, and consequently also of democracy. The names of actual (italics Engels') political parties, however, never fully correspond to them; the party develops, the name remains."

The dialectician Engels, in the twilight of his days, remains true to dialectics. We had with Marx, he says, an excellent, scientifically precise name for the party, but we did not have an actual, that is, a mass proletarian party. Now (end of the nineteenth century) there is an actual party, but its name is scientifically incorrect. Never mind, it will "do," so long as the party develops, so long as the scientific imprecision

* "On international themes from the «People's State»." — *Ed.*

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of its name is not concealed from it and does not hinder its development in the correct direction!

Perhaps some joker might try to comfort us Bolsheviks in Engels' manner: we have an actual party, it is developing excellently; the senseless, grotesque word "Bolshevik" will also "do," expressing absolutely nothing except that purely fortuitous circumstance that at the Brussels-London Congress of 1903 we had a majority.

But the question of the party's name is incomparably less important than the question of the attitude of the revolutionary proletariat toward the state.

In ordinary discussions about the state a constant mistake is made, one against which Engels here cautions us and which we noted in passing in the preceding exposition. Namely: it is constantly forgotten that the destruction of the state is the destruction also of democracy, that the withering away of the state is the withering away of democracy.

At first glance such an assertion appears extremely strange and incomprehensible; perhaps some anxiety will even arise in someone's mind—do we perhaps await the advent of such a social order in which the principle of the subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed, for is not democracy precisely the recognition of such a principle?

* See *Works*, 5th ed., vol. 31, pp. 100, 111, 116. — *Ed.*

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